Will’s eyes stayed closed, but he worked the tortured lines from his face. “That’s irrelevant. Whatever my answer, it doesn’t change the fact that I can’t come with you.”
“Why not?” When I took one more step forward, my body crushed into his, and all of that energy moved between us, further confirming my unexpected request. If life was a game where a person was expected to grab their happiness along the way, I was grabbing or stealing or whatever I had to do with mine and not looking back.
That was when Mrs. Goods let out another tirade, cursing those little monkeys with every last profanity known to man.
Will sighed. “That’s why. I can barely leave her side for a second, let alone move a couple of states away and check in with regular phone calls.”
That was as obvious to me as it was to him. “I know, but after you get her settled in this assisted living place, after you make sure she’s adjusted and safe and happy . . . then come. There’s about as much here for you as there is for me.”
“I can’t.” This time, there was a finality in his voice, and his expression matched it.
My instinct was to step away and save myself the pain, so I took the last step I possibly could toward him. “Why not?”
Will looked like he wanted to wrap his arms around me and pull me close—I could feel the muscles in his arms quivering as he held back—but instead, he stepped away from me, then took one more step back. A not-so-small piece of my heart shattered.
“Because you deserve the best, and I’m not the man who can fill that role.” Will extended his arms at his sides. “Obviously.”
After all of Will’s lectures about letting in the good and rejecting the bad, after every single thing he’d done to prove he was an exception to every rule, hearing and watching him fall on a weak excuse boiled my blood like nothing before. He didn’t get to play the handicapped card when I was finally ready to admit the way I felt about him. I wasn’t letting him off that easily.
“You know what, Will?” I closed in on him and shoved his chest. “Fuck the best and fuck deserving and fuck that sorry excuse. Why don’t you swallow a bit of your own advice and admit what you really want? Why don’t you stop pushing me away the moment I finally stop pushing you away, and we can see if this thing will work?”
“Why should I do that? Huh? Why should I tell you everything you’re so sure is on my mind when you are seconds from walking out that door and out of my life for good? Why admit everything I’ve been trying to tell you while you’ve been basically begging me not to? Why now?” With each word, Will’s voice went quieter and his expression looked too close to defeat.
We weren’t defeated though. Not yet. Bolstering up the very last of my courage, I looked at him. “Because, Will Goods, I’m finally ready and able to admit what I’ve known for a long time.” I studied him for a fleeting moment, unable to remember why it had taken me so long to admit it. Right now, it was so clear it would have been impossible not to admit it. “Because I know I lo—”
“Don’t say it.” Will lifted his hand and backed into the wall behind him. “Not now. Please, Liv, if you really do feel that way about me, don’t say it a minute before you leave. I can take a lot, but I don’t think I can take that.”
That was when the tears pricked to the surface and fell as suddenly as they’d appeared. To be stopped short from admitting the words I’d never felt so sure of in my life was like having to swallow a bomb and let it explode inside me. The pieces of those words would be forever lodged into my core, but they’d never be realized.
“I don’t want to leave it all behind,” I whispered, feeling his note practically burning in the pocket of my shorts.
“Right now you don’t. But once you get in the Suburban and start driving, it’ll get easier, and maybe in a few days or weeks or months, you’ll wake up and realize that leaving it all behind was exactly what you needed to do.” Will’s face was peaceful, mirroring his words.
I couldn’t have felt any less at peace with what he’d said, with what he’d implied. “I don’t want to do this without you.”
He smiled one last time before making his way down the hall—he was already moving in the opposite direction of where I was backing up for the door. “But you will.”
WILL HAD BEEN right. I didn’t want to move on without him, but I did.
. . . And I didn’t.
There hadn’t been a single morning I’d woken without him being the first thing on my mind, nor a night I’d fallen asleep that he hadn’t been the last. I waited for time to ease the pain and held my breath for distance to sever the bond . . . but I was still waiting a month later.
On the surface, I’d managed to do just as Will’s note had instructed me, but everywhere else—in all the places that counted—I hadn’t left it all behind. I couldn’t. Not because I didn’t want to, because honestly, it would have been so much easier to forget all about him than suffer from the pain that clawed at me day and night. I couldn’t leave it all behind, because Will Goods had worked his way into the very essence of who I was. He’d become a permanent fixture, one that couldn’t be broken or forgotten or removed. He’d made me better in so many ways, but he’d left me worse in one monumental way.
The way I felt for him, the emotions that coursed through every part of me, didn’t die when we’d said good-bye to each other. They hadn’t even diluted with time. Having that kind of emotion charging through me all the time, with no one to exchange it with, felt very much like I was being poisoned from the inside out. What I felt for Will—the very thing that had healed me when I’d finally recognized it—was becoming poisonous in his absence. Irony, right along with hindsight, was one huge bitch.
We’d had no contact in one month. At least no physical contact. I managed one hell of a job of channeling him in every other way.
So that part of the move had been difficult—there hadn’t been a word invented yet that defined how difficult that part had been—but the rest of the move had been the opposite. Our apartment was amazing. It was right across the street from a park and had a ton of windows to let in the sun. Paige and Reese were thriving in the city. At any given time, I could find them with some degree of a smile. That was a miracle for any teen girl, let alone a Bennett daughter. School was starting in a month, but they’d both managed to make some new friends. They had found a new studio to take dance lessons at, and Paige was trying out for the soccer team in a couple of weeks. This had become their new home from the moment we’d stepped foot in it, and they hadn’t looked back once.
I was the only one still looking over my shoulder, wondering when and if he’d show up when I least expected it. I might have left Will a voicemail with our new address during a weak moment of nostalgia after we’d first moved out here—you know, just in case we wanted to exchange Christmas cards or something . . . God, the whole behaving-like-a-raving-lunatic-with-Will trend had followed me to California. After that little voicemail disaster, I’d erased Will’s number from my phone. Then I’d cried enough to soak two pillows. I never got a return call from Will regarding my message—another confirmation that he’d moved on and I should do the same . . . But if there was a way to move on from the person who defined love to me, I sure hadn’t found it yet. So, I focused my attention on the girls and pretty much anything that wasn’t Will-related. When we marked our one-month anniversary in our new home and celebrated with a red velvet cake and ice cream, I still hadn’t stopped checking over my shoulder for him.
But life had to go on, with or without him. It was a cruel reality, but a reality nonetheless. Of course, as soon as I’d accept that, I’d be certain the stranger seeming to watch my every move from across the room was him. Or the back of the guy half a block down the sidewalk was him. He was everywhere. And he was nowhere.
I was at a used car lot looking for a reliable little car for the girls to use to get around, and I’d been so sure of my most recent Will sighting that I almost tripped over my own feet. But I saw a differe
nt person emerge from the car that I’d thought Will had been sitting in. I went from almost tripping to cursing under my breath when I realized the guy I’d thought—hoped—was Will didn’t look a thing like him. I was considering getting my head checked, so I tried out some retail therapy instead and bought the silver Honda I’d just test driven. If I saw him one more time though, I was committing to a full-fledged psych analysis.
After I wrote the check and got the title and keys, the salesman told me about a new place close by that I could take the car if I wanted to get the air-conditioning fixed. I’d already known that the car’s air conditioning was lacking, if barely working, but the car had low miles, a great safety rating, and had the teen-girl stamp of approval all over it. Air conditioning could be fixed.
Since I’d taken the bus to the car dealership in anticipation of buying something and having to drive it back, I decided to stop by the place the salesman had mentioned to see if I could leave the Honda to be worked on and pick it up a few days later. He’d said the place was so new they might cut me a deal in order to build their client base. It turned out the auto place was barely a block down the road. It didn’t have any signs outside, but the address was correct, so I parked outside one of the large garage doors and peeked inside the windows to make sure it wasn’t some kind of mob hangout or derelict old warehouse before I opened the door and stepped inside. It was definitely a new shop. It smelled of fresh paint, and everything was clean and tidy. I’d never stepped foot in an auto repair shop I’d describe as clean. Or tidy.
“Hello?” My voice echoed through the large, empty room. “Is anyone here?” I heard solid footsteps behind me, and I was just turning around when I got my answer.
“I’m here.”
Two words. Those two words somehow managed to make me feel so many emotions.
“Will?” I swallowed when my throat went dry. I wanted to go to him, but my feet seemed to be stuck in place. I tried to convince myself this man couldn’t be him—that his face and his voice and his body getting closer with every step was just another illusion concocted by my deteriorating mind. “Is that you?”
He gave me a curious look as he came closer. He looked a hundred times better than the last time I’d seen him. He’d gone from being a deflated version of himself to the very peak version. “Unless there’s another Will you might be referring to, other than the Will Goods who acted like a total fool when you asked him a certain question and were about to tell him a certain confession, then yes, it’s me.”
There was no denying it. That trademark smile paired with the ever-present undercurrent of humor confirmed it. Will Goods—the real one—was standing five feet in front of me.
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, wondering if I should pinch myself. Surely I was dreaming, and if that was the case, I needed to end it before it went any deeper and waking up went from painful to brutal.
“Taking you up on your offer.”
I tilted my head. “Opening up a repair shop a couple miles from where I live?” I knew I was missing what he was trying to convey, but I was too confused to think rationally. Everything about this whole scenario was utterly confounding.
“Well, that’s not exactly the offer I was referring to, but I suppose it’s a part of it.” He walked a wide circle around me.
I turned in place along with him. “How long have you been here?”
“A few weeks. I got your message, by the way.”
“Apparently.” My mouth fell open when the first part of his answer processed. “You’ve been here a few weeks and you didn’t think to come see me sooner?”
Will’s smile moved higher on one side. “We’re seeing each other now.”
“Yeah”—I almost snorted, which wouldn’t have been embarrassing at all—“because I asked some used car salesmen where I could get my sisters’ new car’s air conditioning worked on and he gave me your address.”
Will stopped circling me. A look of contemplation settled onto his face. “How many times does the universe need to keep bringing us together before it starts swinging at us with a couple of two-by-fours?” From the look on his face, you’d think me showing up out of the blue at his shop was some kind of confirmation for him.
To me, it only confirmed one thing. “So you weren’t planning on trying to find me? You moved all the way here just to open a shop and avoid me?”
Will’s brows came together. “Liv, you are the only reason I moved out here.” He picked up the circle making again, but this time, with each one, he inched closer.
I was getting dizzy from the spinning and dizzy from what he was throwing at me. “Then why did it take me randomly walking into your shop for us to connect?”
“Because I had to make a little something of myself before I showed up on your doorstep begging for you to take me back. Because I had to make sure my mom settled into her new place and would be okay without me checking on her every two hours. Because I had to make sure I could be the man you deserved. Because . . . I had a lot of things to work out up here first.” He tapped his temple before lifting a shoulder. “I had to prove to you and to myself that I wouldn’t be a weight you were tied to or a burden you were strapped with. I wanted you to know that even though I can’t see, I can still recognize what’s important. I didn’t want you to take me back—if you took me back—out of guilt . . . or pity. I wanted you to take me back because—”
“I love you.”
Will nodded adamantly. “Yes, because you loved me, not because you hoped if you worked hard enough to force it, love would make its appearance one day.”
I gave him an odd look which, of course, he couldn’t see. He’d missed the meaning in what I’d just said.
“I wanted you to know it like I did. I wanted you to feel its truth in every last fiber of your make-up, like I did. I didn’t want it to be a question in your mind when I came back into your life.” No matter how quickly or how slowly he circled me, Will’s eyes never lost me. His gaze never faltered. He could see me without seeing me. He always had. “Because I wasn’t going to let you get away that easily. I couldn’t let a moment of insecurity and self-pity be responsible for losing the single best thing that’s happened to me. I couldn’t let you go without a fight, Liv, and yes, there might be other men who would do anything for you and go to any length for you, but I can’t speak for those men. All I can speak for is myself, for this man. And Liv”—they didn’t see anything, I knew that, but when his eyes blazed right then, I swore he could see absolutely everything—“I am the man who would do anything for you. I’m the man who would go to any length for you.”
I was fast approaching choking-up territory, but he’d missed my meaning the first time. Time to clarify it. “I love you.” He was so close I could almost reach out and touch him.
He kept circling. “Even if you didn’t though, I’d still be that man. Even if you don’t love me, I’m still the man who will do anything for you.”
He wasn’t quite within arm’s reach, so I unfroze my feet and moved toward him. He broke to a stop when I planted my hands on his chest.
“No, Will, that’s not what I meant.” I looked into the face I’d loved for so long that I couldn’t remember when it had started. But I knew one thing—it would never end. “I love you. I love you.”
The wrinkles lining his forehead ironed out, one by one, as a smile moved into place. Watching the man I loved, frame for frame, realize and accept the love I had for him was a sight I’d never forget.
“Why didn’t you say so?” His arms slipped around me effortlessly as his head lowered to mine.
“I thought I’ve been showing you for a while now.” My hand slipped up his chest to the curve of his neck.
Will’s nose nudged me, encouraging my mouth to his. “You have, but those are some damn beautiful words to hear, Liv Bennett.”
I lifted one of his hands to my mouth so he could feel my smile before I kissed each of his knuckles. “You think we’ve got a fighting chan
ce at this?”
His hand curled into my cheek. “Yeah, so long as we keep fighting.”
He kissed me then, and in that kiss, I learned yet another lesson from Will Goods: Life was a series of choices. It wasn’t a chain of events at the mercy of fate’s whim. We got to choose who we wanted to become, who we wanted to surround ourselves with, and—most importantly—who we wanted to love. This whole summer, I’d learned many lessons, but one theme had tied them all together: love. It wasn’t a simple concept, but it wasn’t a hard one either. And as Will continued to express his love with his mouth and his touch and his very being, something that had seemed so false not so long ago became the most real thing I’d ever experienced.
Love who you want to love. Love who you need to love. And love those you do without abandon or fear. Sure, it had taken me a while, but I’d finally figured it out: Love wasn’t a chore; it was a privilege.
You know those people who wind up defining their own world instead of letting the world define them? I was the newest member of the club.
. . .
CAPS AND GOWNS and diplomas. Two of the three I could have done without, but the other one—that fancy piece of card stock with my name and Bachelor of Arts stamped on it—more than made up for having to suffer through a hot afternoon in a dark polyester robe and cap.
It was graduation day, and although it might have taken me longer than most—and while I might have taken a few more “colorful” detours than the rest of my classmates scouring the lawn for the caps that had just sailed into the air—I’d done it. Two years later in my four-and-a-half-year plan to a college degree, and there I was, a bona fide college graduate. So what if I was a few years older than the majority of my fellow graduates, and who cared that I’d had to drop out days before I finished my junior year and take a job as a stripper? Because I’d done it. Against all odds and a mass of probabilities stacked against me, the oldest Bennett girl from the armpit of the country had earned a college degree. In this case, the end justified the means I’d taken to get to this point.
Damaged Goods Page 33
